The Legacy of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  So down we went, like Dante into the Inferno, only we were lowered on a rope. It was dim and airless down there, not stifling, but close. And after navigating a tunnel or two, we were in a Roman house. We knew it was a house because directly in front of us we could see through an arch a room whose walls were not lined with sarcophagi, as would be the walls of a tomb, but with painted surfaces. And the entire floor space was occupied by a single scene rendered in mosaic tiles.

  Before allowing us any closer, Ali took pains to explain to us that this was only one of countless such houses — he was familiar with seventeen of them — but that we would be limited on our foray to only a single pair of rooms close to the entrance. Our time was limited, he explained, because the air was poisoned with underground gases. Very reasonable, we thought. Also, he warned us there were ninjas hidden in niches in the walls. There could be no doubt as to which of the two — the poison gases or the ninjas — he found more menacing.

  Now with a grand gesture he waved us under an arch, and we found ourselves on the edge of what can best be described as a mosaic carpet, divided into two scenes. At our feet stood Dionysius (identified by his name in black Greek letters) driving a gorgeous gold chariot drawn by two prancing leopards with Niobe at his side. It was amazing seeing the scene in motion, the animals prancing, their front hooves raised as they rushed forward, and Dionysius’ muscles bulging with the effort of clutching the reins. It was lifelike to the bone, yet the whole scene had been created out of little chips of stone and metal. The other half of the floor was occupied by seven figures also in motion, walking along as if out for a stroll on a Roman street.

  Ali allowed us only one more room. There at our feet sat the god Poseidon, the points of his trident sharp enough to stab you and his beard tinged grey as old men’s beards tend to be. The god is seated on a golden chariot, the horses again with forelegs raised, the hooves coming right out at you. He is surrounded by Oceanus and his sea creatures, floating, wriggling, swimming, as in life. You have to go there someday, Papa, and see it perfectly preserved, even to the blush on the cheeks of the maidens after a thousand and a half years.

  When Ali signaled that our time was up, our disappointment must have touched his heart because instead of taking us toward the exit, he agreed to brave the wrath of the ninjas and led us forward to yet another low arch.

  “This floor has been ravaged,” he explained. “The figure you see has been damaged. But it is our treasure of treasures, the Gypsy Girl. She is our Venus.”

  As he spoke he pointed to a half-destroyed panel studded with bullet holes. (What encounter could have happened here?) Most of the girl’s lower body has vanished. But her face is perfectly present. It is the eyes that haunt you. They seem to see into your very soul and bring to light all the secret thoughts that you have kept hidden away.

  I know an Italian painter called Leonardo from Vinci famous for painting eyes. In fact, I once saw a crayon sketch of Madonna Isabella that he left behind at Mantova as a kind of thank-you for dinner. It was an excellent likeness. And I hear that he has since made an easel picture of a Madonna Lisa that has become famous in the world for her remarkable eyes. Maybe so. But if one day someone boasts to me that he has seen this Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, I will tell him, “Good for you. But I have seen the gypsy Venus of Zeugma.”

  After today, we will have no regular contact with the capital. So you cannot be certain of hearing from me until this brigade arrives at Üsküdar field many weeks hence. But have no fear for my safety. Traveling through southern Anatolia I will be clasped firmly within the bonds of empire. Our only enemy will be every traveler’s complaint, dysentery. And I intend to follow your dietary dictum as I have from the beginning of this long adventure: eat plenty of yogurt every day; no ripe melons, however tempting. Your wise advice has kept me healthy all this time, and I am cheered by the prospect of holding you in a tight embrace at the doorway of the Doctor’s House in Topkapi Palace before the year has reached its end.

  See you in Istanbul, Papa!

  Your loving son,

  D.

  55

  COMING HOME

  At nine o’clock on the morning of January 3, 1536, the members of the Sultan’s Heavy Armament Brigade were assembled in Üsküdar field and officially dismissed from duty. By nine-thirty, Danilo del Medigo, no longer on loan to the brigade but once again a member of the Fourth Oda of the Sultan’s School for Pages, had stowed his gear, strapped his money pouch to his waist, and set out for the docks. There he spent an excessive amount of money for a private barge to ferry him across the Bosphorus to the Galata pier.

  Once ashore, he headed directly to the stalls built up against the wall of the Grand Istanbul Bazaar, where Jews and Moors and Franks and black Africans and Arabs of all sects competed to provide customers with whatever their hearts desired. Anything from a balas ruby to a ripe tomato could be had for a price.

  At the bazaar Danilo’s wants were simple and easy to satisfy. He made his way past the valuable offerings in the domed bedestan to the shed behind it known to the locals as “Belgrade,” because a group of Serbs had adopted it as their market. There, from three different vendors, the page purchased one cinnamon stick, one rosebud cutting, and a bunch of carrots, each neatly wrapped. These he carried across Beyazit Square to the Old Palace where the Sultan’s harem was housed.

  Correction: before he crossed the square, the page took the time to climb up Palace Point to a stall in the Sultan’s stables at Topkapi Palace, where he offered the carrots — gratefully received — and exchanged extravagant expressions of affection with the occupant of the stall, a horse named Bucephalus.

  The climb to Seraglio Point was steep, and once the page set foot in the stable, he was sorely tempted to bed down in the straw beside Bucephalus as he had done so often in the past. But he did not linger. With an affectionate pat, he bade his horse good day and sped off down the hill to the Old Palace, where he presented himself at the harem gate. There, he deposited his two remaining purchases with the guard to be delivered to Princess Saida as soon as possible.

  The next stop on his itinerary was the Doctor’s House back in the Fourth Court of Topkapi Palace. But on the heels of that thought came the seductive idea that if he were to turn left instead of right after entering the gate, a few steps would land him back in his old bed in the pages’ dormitory where he was expected today. The cozy feather quilt beckoned. He succumbed. The moment he laid his head on the pillow, he drifted off into a deep sleep.

  Danilo del Medigo was not a dreamer. The few dreams he had left his mind the moment he opened his eyes. But today’s dream was unusually sticky. Even when he blinked, the round, smiling black face with its large white teeth and the gold earrings did not disappear.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  The page rolled over and rammed his head into the pillow. Surely the Sultan had not arrived in town so soon.

  Now came a shake of the quilt, not rough but not gentle either. Slowly he turned his head and squinted at the figure looming above him.

  “Narcissus!” This was no dream.

  “Narcissus it is, sir, with a message for you.”

  The slave leaned over and held out a folded piece of copy paper, pressed the note into the sleepy page’s hand, and was gone. Unfolded, the note revealed a message in red chalk: Same time, same place, he read. Two long. Two short.

  The light streaming in from the skylight told him that it was still many hours until the “same time.” And the fluffy quilt beckoned him to return to sleep. But, although this morning he had not put his filial duties ahead of his other concerns, Danilo del Medigo was, at heart, a dutiful son who knew how offended his father would be if he somehow got news of his son’s return from a stranger. So with some reluctance he left his warm bed and set off to pay his respects to the doctor.

  The doctor retired early these days. He tended to run down soon after his afternoon nap.
That would give just enough time, his son calculated, for a fond embrace and a taste of supper before he clambered down the hill to the Grand Vizier’s dock to await the familiar signal — two long, two short flashes of the lantern — that would announce the arrival of a sleek black caique.

  His timing was perfectly calculated. He did indeed arrive at the Doctor’s House in time to find a place at his father’s bedside, where his face was the first thing the doctor saw when he opened his eyes. And the boy was well rewarded for the sacrifice of his own sleep by the look he saw on his father’s face when he bent over to kiss the withered cheek.

  After a brief meal Danilo was able to leave his father content with his promise to return two days hence to celebrate the Sabbath, if not before.

  So it was with a clear conscience and an eager heart that he set off at a run to tumble down the hill behind the Fourth Court and lie flat on the rock shelf overlooking the cove with his eyes fixed on the spot where an incoming craft should first be spotted in the dark. Only when he had settled there did he give himself over to the wild anticipation that he now allowed to course through his body in expectation of what was to come.

  56

  IN THE HAMAM

  Although she had been in and out of the harem’s baths since childhood, Princess Saida had never completely mastered the skill of strolling around comfortably in the high pattens worn by the harem women in the hamam. She could execute complicated dance steps without losing her balance, but she could not overcome a tendency to stumble and fall when she was propped up on the five-inch platforms designed to preserve tender feet from the hamam’s heated marble floors.

  The treacherous pattens were not the only reason for the princess to evade her stepmother’s pressing invitations to join her in one of her days of beauty at the luxurious spa that the Sultana had built for herself in her “temporary” quarters at Topkapi. But today Princess Saida had a reason to make use of the Sultana’s cadre of expert practitioners in the beauty arts. And there she stood at the curtained doorway of the hamam, ready to endure whatever discomforts or indignities awaited her as the price of making herself beautiful for the long-awaited reunion with the love of her life.

  Already her nose sniffed the air that permeated the place — a foggy mix of roses, musk, and amber. She pulled the curtain aside. The room ahead of her — the rotunda — was buzzing with the chatter of women coming and going and resting from their strenuous body treatments. There were women being dressed, women being undressed, and women being served sherbets and candied fruits from the baskets carried on the heads of the bare-breasted portresses who served the rotunda, while other attendants made their way to and from the laundry bearing piles of fluffy towels and embroidered robes.

  The rotunda, a room of no great size, was capped with a perforated dome supported by a series of slim marble columns, a design similar to that of the other spas in the harem. But in the Sultana’s hamam, the simplicity of the structure was more than offset by the grandeur of the furnishings. The couches spread about on the broad marble steps leading up to the central fountain were upholstered in satin, each one covered by a fine silk carpet and piled high with cushions of the softest Siberian down. The basins used to carry warm water from the fountain for the final foot washing were of hand-beaten copper fitted with gold handles. And the pitchers that hung from the washerwomen’s belts were studded with turquoise stones and pearls. No question, the Sultana’s spa had her mark on it.

  The princess was quickly recognized and escorted to an empty couch where she was smoothly relieved of her clothing and wrapped in a huge fluffy towel. Then she was offered a choice of footwear — pattens with gold soles, pattens with jeweled buckles of various colours, and pattens strapped with fine leather or silk ribbons. The choice was immaterial to Saida. She would have difficulty walking in all of them. But she knew that the hated things would keep her feet high above the water that swirled around the drains of the rooms ahead, carrying off the soap scum and the depilatory creams and stray hairs that streamed down from the women’s bodies as they were being rinsed off.

  Still, in and of itself, the filthy mulch on the floors was not troublesome enough to cause the princess to risk offending her father’s wife by refusing the Sultana’s invitations. What kept her away was the enforced intimacy of the place. Ever since she moved her household from the harem in the Old Palace to Topkapi, the Sultana had taken to using the enforced closeness of the hamam as a bully pulpit from which to preach to her stepdaughter sermons on filial duty. Saida must, simply must, give up the quarters in the Old Palace that she inherited from her grandmother and move closer to her father, who needed her, and to her brothers and sisters, who cried for her. It was willful of the princess to bury herself in the Old Palace with a bunch of discarded concubines who spent their days sitting and waiting for a visit from a sultan who never came.

  “Besides,” the lecture went on, “you are bound to move to your own palace when you marry. Might as well start packing.”

  Thus far, the princess had managed to withstand the pressure of these cozy chats, clinging to the forlorn hope that Allah would spare her that day. But she felt her will slowly being worn down, nowhere faster than in the Sultana’s hamam.

  Apparently, someone had forewarned the masseuse of the princess’s peculiar sensitivities, so today she was spared another of the hamam’s pitfalls, the frightening sensation of her arms being torn from their sockets and her legs from her torso. Administered for only half the time and with only half the force of a normal massage, the treatment turned out to be quite bearable and Saida sank into a peaceful doze, only to be alerted by the sound of a familiar voice that rose above the hubbub of the room.

  “Princess! Princess! Where is the princess? Is she not come?”

  This outcry was followed by an inaudible reply. Then again came the familiar voice: “Bring her to me at once!”

  And the princess was instantly wrapped up and delivered like a parcel to the private cubicle presided over by a gedicli, who was a prodigy in the perilous art of depilation. Because both custom and religion decreed that every inch of a woman’s skin below the neck be entirely free of hair, and because the paste of rusma and lime spread over the skin to loosen the hair follicles contained enough arsenic to burn through the flesh to the bone, the elimination of stray hairs was a dangerous procedure. If the paste was left on too long, it would corrode the flesh; not long enough and there would be a scattering of errant hairs left to be extracted by plucking — most painful.

  Splayed out on the table, her lower body as smooth and hairless as a plucked chicken, the Sultana somehow managed to convey with a single, broad gesture the resignation of a martyr as she murmured, “What we women sacrifice for the men we love . . .”

  Just then, the ever-vigilant Amazon spied a single hair buried in the folds of Hürrem’s labia, an insult to God, which she avenged with great vigor.

  “Ouch!” the lady gasped. Quickly recovered, she turned to the princess with an expression that said, You see what I mean by sacrifice? Then she added, with a pitying glance at the un-beautified, virginal body that Saida was hiding under her towel, “It is always worth it, as you will soon discover. Come closer. Let me take a look at you.”

  The girl’s chin was firmly cupped by a pair of strong hands. “Such white teeth! You smile so seldom that we do not often have the chance to see them. Sit here beside me, on that stool.”

  Saida sat obediently.

  “I am so pleased to have you join me today for my day of beauty. I always invite you as a courtesy, but I never expect you to come. After all, it isn’t as if you have to make yourself beautiful for a lover or a husband returning from the wars.”

  At the mention of the word “lover” the girl suddenly turned bright red, but she was able to cloak the alteration in her complexion by lowering her head modestly and remaining silent.

  “The truth is that an unmarried girl like you
has only a father to get beautiful for, and your father would find you beautiful even if you had wattles on your neck or hairs sprouting out of your chin.”

  This suggestion was followed by a hearty laugh. Still, the girl lifted her fingers to rub at her chin just in case there might be a kernel of truth in the jest. This lapse might have been noticed by someone less concerned with her own purposes than the Sultana. But Hürrem tended to unleash a veritable cascade of words once she got started on one of her frequent flights of oratory, and on she went, quite unmindful of the girl’s discomfort.

  Over the time Saida had spent in this woman’s company since her grandmother’s death, she had evolved a response to the seemingly benign, but somehow not quite kind, remarks that often issued from her stepmother’s mouth: never a reply. Only downcast eyes, a shy smile, and silence. And with Hürrem, silence was always an option, she being a non-stop talker who simply talked right through it.

  “For me the news of your father’s imminent return is an answer to my prayers,” the Sultana went on. “Four days, I am told. Four days and I will see my beloved and esteemed Sultan after all these months of separation. To hear his voice. To feel his touch . . .” Then, patting her hairless belly, “Of course I must have a full day of beauty to prepare.” A brief, satisfied glance at her nether regions. Then, she reached for Saida’s hand. “I understand that to you, my fortune-favored Sultan is simply a father. But to me he is the world. When you are married, you will understand.”

  Again, Saida smiled and said nothing. And, having made her point, the Sultana moved on to another subject.